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Standing and waiting in a crowd at peak hour outside Newtown train station at the pedestrian crossing. A crossdresser wearing a one piece orange swimsuit, a tiny matching frilly skirt and platform shoes pushes through. The sound of a communal inbreath as she runs dangerously through the traffic to the other side.

We see the occasional extreme Muslim cleric railing against the west. This week we witnessed a similar incident in Parliament, with a senator calling for a return to the White Australia policy and a ban on Muslim immigration. An insight of René Girard's assists in interpreting this incident and the resentment and fear which lies beneath it.

The earthworms and bees were the first to know, wrote Nobel laureate and Belarusian native Svetlana Alexievich. The bees stayed in their hives; the worms buried themselves so deep that fishermen digging for bait on the banks of the Pripyat River were perplexed that they couldn't find any. The humans were slower to learn.

Julianne Nguyen turns a smartphone, webcam and head-mounted go-pro to the purposes of self-examination. A child of Vietnamese parents but born in Australia, she practises Christianity and Buddhism, and is trying to parse these various elements. 'I'm Australian. I feel Vietnamese,' she says, then chants: 'West. East. No, West. No, East.'

Fraser Anning's speech was heavily criticised, though few who did so bear credibility. Turnbull, Dutton and Tudge can hardly be taken seriously when they invoke multiculturalism. This is how racism works: it displaces focus from material problems to imagined threats.

If trustees don't understand the meaning of trustworthiness, all the penalties in the world won't encourage them to act in a trustworthy manner. What is needed is conversion — the recognition that the good of each individual depends on their seeking the common good, and the determination to ensure that this vision permeates corporations.

Murray and Frijters detail what they call Australia's 'grey corruption': the grubby nexus between 'James' (corrupt business people) and governments or regulators. The Jameses thrive at the expense of the 'Bruces': ordinary working people. The games of the corrupt elite now cost the 'Bruces' about half their wages.

Whether Carr or Greer participates at Brisbane Writers Festival has no real impact on their ability to speak out and be heard. The real threat to freedom of expression for most people comes not from programming decisions at literary festivals but rather to the public through their employers.

For too long, the media has been complicit in maintaining the conditions which allow the likes of Cottrell and Hanson to become 'figures'. They fuel history wars, demonise migrants, target Aboriginal activists, objectify and ridicule women while ensuring at the end of the day, the Murdochs and Packers of the world still have hefty pay cheques.

We had some books at home so I wasn't wholly deprived but I did have to discover reading without any real parental guidance; English wasn't even our home language. But when I started working at my local public library, it became clear that while I might have been the child of refugees, for many, libraries themselves were a refuge.